Chapter 2 – The Prescription In The Silver Locket

“What are you talking about?” Vanessa stammered, taking another step backward.

Luca didn’t answer her. He walked to the center of the room and placed the silver locket flat on the mahogany table.

I was close enough to see it.

It wasn’t a picture inside the locket.

It was a tightly folded piece of paper. The edges were singed, as if someone had pulled it out of a fire.

Luca unfolded it carefully. His hands, which had been perfectly steady while dismantling rival families, were now shaking.

“This is a toxicology report,” Luca said, his voice hollow. “From a private clinic in Switzerland. Dated three years ago. The week Catherine died.”

The guests began to murmur. The older mafia men exchanged dark glances.

“It says Catherine’s blood contained lethal levels of digitalis,” Luca continued, reading the words like a death sentence. “A heart medication. Catherine didn’t have a heart condition.”

Vanessa’s face lost every drop of color. “Luca, that’s forgery. Clara is trying to frame me!”

“Clara didn’t know you three years ago!” Luca shouted.

He turned the paper over.

“But Clara knew Catherine’s private nurse,” he read. He looked up, his eyes burning into Vanessa. “She knew the nurse who administered Catherine’s daily vitamin injections when she was pregnant with Sophie.”

Vanessa shook her head frantically. “I was just her nurse! I followed the doctor’s orders!”

“You were the only one in the room,” Thomas said, his voice cutting through the tension like a blade.

We all looked at the old man.

Thomas gripped the edge of the table. “Three years ago, on the day of the crash, Catherine came to my quarters above the garage. She was crying. She told me her chest hurt every time Vanessa gave her an injection. She told me she was driving to the lab to get her blood tested privately.”

Luca froze. “She was driving to the lab?”

“Yes,” Thomas said, his eyes filling with tears. “She never made it. The police said the brakes failed.”

The room was suffocatingly silent.

Vanessa’s back hit the wall. “You’re taking the word of a senile old driver and a jealous sister!”

Luca looked at the toxicology report again. Then, he noticed something at the bottom of the page. A handwritten note in blue ink.

He squinted. “Clara wrote something here. ‘Look at the prescription number, Luca. Look who signed for the medication.’”

Luca pulled his phone from his pocket. He typed furiously. He was accessing the family’s private medical network.

We waited in a silence so thick it felt like drowning.

Luca looked up from his phone.

He didn’t look at Vanessa. He looked at the other end of the table.

At a man who had been sitting quietly the entire evening.

Dr. Elias Thorne. The Moretti family physician. And Vanessa’s uncle.

Dr. Thorne slowly set his napkin on the table. He didn’t look surprised. He looked like a man who knew his time had run out.

“Elias,” Luca whispered. “You prescribed it.”

“I did what was necessary for the Bellini family,” the doctor said calmly.

Before Luca could move, Dr. Thorne reached into his jacket.

Not for a gun.

He pulled out a heavy, brass skeleton key and threw it onto the marble floor.

“You think this stops with Catherine?” Dr. Thorne asked, smiling a cold, terrible smile. “Check the basement vault, Luca. You’re marrying my niece tomorrow. The Bellini family already owns half of everything you have. And if you touch either of us, my men will burn this house down with your daughter inside.”

TITLE: The Key To The Basement Vault

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